Tech News Weekly 363 Transcript

Please be advised this transcript is AI-generated and may not be word for word. Time codes refer to the approximate times in the ad-supported version of the show.

0:00:00 - Mikah Sargent
Coming up on Tech News Weekly. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of the Verge is here and we kick off the show by talking about Amazon's new Echo Show 21 and Echo Show 15. We kind of broaden that conversation to talk about smart displays and their place in our homes and elsewhere. Afterward I talk about a really, really cool piece over on the Financial Times about how AI is playing its role in the robotics revolution. Jennifer Pattison Tuohy and I talk about robots in our homes, robots in our lives, our fears and our excitement going forward. Windows Central stops by to give us the lowdown on what was announced at Microsoft Ignite, including a little mini PC from Microsoft, as well as the Windows 11 integration with Meta Quest headsets. Then the brilliant antitrust reporter of Bloomberg, Leah Nylen, stops in to give us the lowdown on what's going on with Google and how the DOJ wants the company to sell off Chrome. You can tune in now for that. Look, stay tuned.

0:01:23 - Mikah Sargent
This is Tech News Weekly episode 363, with Jennifer Pattison Tuohy and me, Mikah Sargent, recorded Thursday, November 21st 2024: DOJ Wants Google to Sell Chrome. Hello and welcome to Tech News Weekly, the show where every week we talk to and about the people making and breaking that tech news. I am your host, Mikah Sargent, and I am joined across the Internet by the wonderful Jennifer Pattison Tuohy of The Verge. Welcome back, Jen.

0:01:57 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Hi, Mikah, great to be here. It's been a while. Feels like it's been a while. It does feel like it's been a while.

0:02:03 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, sorry, it's good to get you here. Yeah, for people who are listening and not watching.

0:02:17 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
One of your many animals has joined the party to talk about. He loves you, Mikah.

0:02:21 - Mikah Sargent
He's a big fan, hello kitty. So for people who are tuning in for the first time or who need a reminder, the beginning of the show is a great time for us to talk about our stories of the week. These are stories that, in some cases, we've written and or are of interest, especially in my case, that we want to talk about. And so, jennifer, without further ado, why don't you take it away?

0:02:46 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Sure, yeah. So this week Amazon surprised us all with a brand new Echo Show smart display, which, in my smart home world, is big news and quite exciting. So, yeah, this is the Echo Show 21. And it is not their 21st device, although actually, if I counted all the Echo devices that have launched.

I think we actually might be beyond 21. But this is their 21-inch smart display, which is huge. Basically we're now into TV territory, I think, and actually that's what's kind of unique about this model. It's an upgrade from the Show 15, which came out a couple of years ago, and it's the first Echo Show smart display that is also a Fire TV, so it has built-in Fire TV capability and this comes with a fire TV Alexa voice remote so you can act you. It works both as a smart display to do things like show your calendar, weather, show video streams from video doorbell or cameras and be sort of a helpful tool for managing your home also smart home controllers or you can pull out the TV remote and switch over and turn it into a Fire TV.

I use an Echo Show 15 in my kitchen and it is a great little kitchen TV. This is also wall mountable, which is another sort of new category in the smart display space. Originally, smart displays were very much stick it on a smart speaker. It was a touchscreen on a smart speaker. The original Echo Show was an example of that, but now we're starting to see this wall-mounted element and this one is big for the wall. You need some space on the wall. It's $400, which is quite spendy for a smart display, but not so much for a TV. But it's only 1080p, so this is not like high quality TV screen, which is kind of a shame.

I was hoping they maybe would have bumped it up a little bit. That's what the Echo Show 15 was as well, but one of the nice features from my perspective that they've added is it's also a built-in smart home hub, so it has a Zigbee and Thread radio and it works with Matter, which the old one did as well, but now you have Thread with Matter so you can control more smart home devices than you could before, and also local control they've added to this device, which is a great feature in the smart home. From the TV perspective, they've improved the audio as well and the camera has moved to the center and now has better sort of dynamic framing, so auto framing when you can be standing in your kitchen cooking and talking to your mom on an Alexa video call and move around and it will be able to go with you, which is what other Echo Show devices have had before. So it's nice that they're bringing it to this one which is really a good device to stick in your kitchen, at least the 15. I'm not sure about the 21. 21 is big, but they have also updated the Echo Show 15 with all of these features, so you get everything I've just said, except for the giant screen. So that's a nice upgrade. It's now more expensive too it's $300 instead of $250, but you get the remote with it, so it's kind of a fun gadget upgrade.

I know we're all anxiously awaiting what Apple's about to do in this smart home display space, where there's been a lot of rumors about that over the last few months, weeks, even days, and we've talked about it before on the show. But it's like the smart display is sort of having a bit of a moment slash identity crisis. Yeah, because Right now, because this is a TV.

0:06:55 - Mikah Sargent
Right, and that's the thing it seemed like for a while. What they were doing was separating the two, right, it was this idea that you specifically weren't going to have a television, and then, as people's use patterns became clear, they thought oh right, they actually would like to use this as a TV as well. You only need the one device. That makes more sense. I think that that's the way to go with it. For sure is this idea that you have a smart display that is partially the to-do list, the stuff that you would have on your refrigerator, but then is also able to just serve as a television. I think that that's a clever sort of idea that's almost come back into style, or like come around the corner, right, where we're not separating the two and it's all kind of working together.

I I'm also kind of curious about the size, um, especially because they've kept it at 1080p. Uh, I don't know, though I don't know how much, because I I have trouble picturing the consumer that is after this specific device versus the smaller one, and whether they would be not driven to it because of the fact that it is 1080p versus 4K. Are they spending a lot of time watching stuff on it? Do they plan to mostly use it as just a smart display that can tell them the next step in the recipe. I just want to talk to these folks who end up getting this thing.

0:08:27 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, so there are two things there, I think. The first I get what you're saying about have one device that does everything, which makes a lot of sense, except for when you're dealing with smart displays, because they're not very powerful, they're kind of underpowered, underprogrammed devices because they're cheap by and large, and an Echo Show in particular I struggle with for touch control, which is what I would want to use a touchscreen in my house for is to press to control things, and it's kind of laggy and slow and I'm a bit worried this getting bigger, if it's going to, we're going to, you know, without getting better processor and a better screen, whether this is going to be a bit laggy and difficult to control. So we'll see, I think I think the Echo Show device is still very much focused on just showing you things and you still control them with your voice. So I think what's the interesting thing about this and one device I have in my house that I do really love that is almost as big as this is the Skylight Max calendar and that is a smart display calendar and I have it vertically and it shows all my family's calendar activities and you can do that with the Echo Show too.

It has a calendar feature. I don't think you can have just the calendar on it, but putting this on your wall vertically rather than horizontally might be a use case for people who want a bit more room for the different widgets that it has. The 15 could be a little cramped if you want to put a lot on it. As you can see in the picture and the article, there's a lot of different widgets you can put on this and the bigger screen will be a little bit more forgiving for that. I suppose being able to move things around and see more content on a larger screen. So yeah, but that combination of functions in smart displays, whilst in theory making a lot of sense, in practice hasn't been a great experience so far.

This is why and it's interesting to see Amazon coming out with this big 21-inch and then we're hearing Apple's potentially coming out with a little teeny six-inch screen- yeah, the opposite and the idea being you put those probably all around your house and they're easier to control, but you're not going to stand there and watch the nightly news on it. Right, it's a device for controlling as opposed to a device for consumption. And yeah, that's kind of the. I think there's sort of a push and pull here and I like smart displays that have functions specifically Like. I like that this is a TV. I like the Echo Hub is a smart controller. I like the Echo Spot, that is an alarm clock, rather than trying to shove everything into one device. And Amazon has multiple sizes and shapes, so they kind of it's kind of the Goldilocks approach. I suppose there's something for everyone.

0:11:29 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, you're right, You're right. That does make it make a little more sense, things on on, uh hoping a prayer, on spaghetti, uh sticking to a wall, on telemetry, as Microsoft would call it. And so that's the part where I mean, because I'm looking. I always like to look at the marketing shots and see how the company seems to be positioning it Right, how they think you're going to use it. Yeah, exactly how they think you're going to use it. And in almost every one of the shots they are showing it in either an entryway or, as you pointed out, in a kitchen. Now the one shot has it literally on the kitchen island, just in the middle of the kitchen island. There's no stinking way I'm going to have this on the corner of my kitchen island taking up space, but I have to give them credit where credit's due. John, it's in the Amazon listing for it. I don't know if you'll be able to get to it by the time I'm done talking about it, but I have to give them credit where credit's due. They actually do show the cord running from the display down and ugly wrapped around the corner of the countertop and plugged in. They don't show where it's plugged in, but they show the cord, and that is nice because that's real and that's not. That's one example. Further down, if you just keep scrolling, there's an actual, like animated, image of it zooming in on the countertop. But anyway, my point is, I wonder if because, okay, this is what I'm trying to get at In those images they're also showing the rings of power, you know, playing on this TV and I'm going the people who made that film, that took the time to color grade it and shoot it with the best possible cameras and this and that, and then they're just like you can watch the rings of power on it. That makes me wonder if we I'm more speaking about myself, I think here and some of the other journalists who cover this stuff get a little bit too in our head about the specs, Because I have to believe that Amazon has some insights into what its customers are interested in and what they're not in theory, and so something suggests that they don't care that watching the rings of power on a 1080p screen that is not HDR isn't going to give the best quality. You can still watch the rings of power on it, whether it's sitting in your entryway or in your kitchen or wherever it happens to be. And that's interesting to me because it tells me in theory, that people you know, your average user who's in theory going to purchase this thing, doesn't really care all that much that it's not 4K and it's not this and it's not that, and so in that way I find that fascinating. And so in that way I find that fascinating and it makes me wonder if that's going to be kind of the future or whether you know it speaks to what you would expect from the device. So yeah, that's the Echo Show 21. And Amazon, of course, going the way of making a larger option versus a smaller option.

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All righty. So my story of the week is one from the Financial Times, and this is a piece that everybody should go and check out because it is really well illustrated. It has lots of different images and videos and I want to make sure that you get the value of that. It's a piece talking about robots and their sort of use and experience within AI, or rather, their use and experience within the world by way of AI. So with these robots, you know, we've seen for a long time different companies trying to make robotics work for all sorts of mundane tasks. One that continues to be my desire, my hope, my prayer is that robots will be able to fold my clothes for me, that I don't have to do my laundry anymore. I want it and I would pay a stupid amount of money for it. So seeing a robot that can, for example, look at a book and flip a page, can maybe add some sauce onto a piece of bread, is able to cook, is able to put a shirt what onto a hanger we're getting into the laundry space. It's pretty cool. But this is the thing Up to this point, it's been very difficult for robots to have the programming necessary to figure this stuff out.

They can be programmed for a specific task and do that one specific task well, but any sort of jazz, any sort of improv, is where these robots will stumble, literally and figuratively, and one issue that comes with this is robots trying to make their way around our world requires way too much improvisation, and the sort of human aspect, which is, unfortunately, also the chaos aspect of the world, means that they have a tough time doing anything at all. That's where artificial intelligence comes into play, though, because, with AI, robots can be better trained to improv and, in doing so, can cook shrimp and take the lids off of pots and uh, even, you know fix their fellow robots. Just a recent piece about it Niantic, the company that is responsible for Pokemon Go and that Harry Potter game, and then also a few other games over time. Those are those GPS-based games where you go to different locations and you can gain points, and all this other stuff. That company is actually working toward making not a large language model, but a large location model that companies would be able to leverage for robotics to be able to move around the world, Because if you've got that information of how a human being navigates a path, then you've suddenly got and dozens upon dozens, upon dozens, hundreds, hundreds, hundreds.

You've got information that can be plugged in and used to help a robot make an educated decision, Although that's giving a little bit too much humanity to the robot, but you get my point.

This piece talks about the breakthroughs that have taken place over time, from simply being something that can determine this is a photo of a dog or this is a photo of a hot dog, to actually generating an image of an animal based on what you say to it, and then going from there to you know computer vision of understanding different aspects of what needs to be done whenever you set the robot on a task.

So there's a kind of set of videos that talk about taking the T, that there's a letter and it's the letter T, and there's a drawing of the letter T, an outline of the letter T, and the robot's job is to move the letter T into that outline, and so the researcher will drop it in a different place each time, and then the robot needs to put it into place.

And that is, you know, it's easy to do if you drop the T in the same place each time and the robot just has to turn it around and shift it into place. A large language model for identification and what they call vision language data for even more clear identification, being able to tell the difference between a mug or a coffee pot or whatever it happens to be. Now, Jennifer, we talked before about your kind of future vision for the smart home and how you would have, and you'll have to remind me exactly what you had talked about, but I think you said it was kind of talking about smart appliances and how there would be robotics involved with those appliances. How do you see? You know we continue to see improvements made to the robotic vacuums that are puttering around our homes.

That's step one though right.

0:23:12 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Yeah, and I mean this article is just gorgeous, by the way. Definitely go check it out. I looked at it on mobile and desktop and it's like, oh, it's just such great sort of it makes you realize that magazines I missed magazines for a while because internet articles didn't always look so good, but now we're doing some amazing things online with these types of features, so it's beautiful. They've done an amazing job. But, yes, I mean this was fascinating to sort of really understand how robots are becoming smarter. But they actually explicitly reference in this the Rosie the robot, the Jetson kind of idea, which is something I've written about in the past. And then you know the idea of having a single kind of humanoid robot that can do all of these tasks in your home. And it's incredibly difficult, as this article goes through, but that we're beginning to see actual changes and seeing, you know, robots that can tie shoelaces and because they're able to understand more by being powered by LLMs, and it's sort of taking all of the major advances we've been seeing in artificial intelligence over the last decade or so and sort of forging or showing the path to this sort of future autonomous robot, with some caveats. And the way I've sort of approached it today is I love the idea of a Rosie the robot, but ultimately, what feels more realistic and also a little less creepy in our homes are robots that have specific tasks.

So, you know, you talked about laundry. I mean, we technically have robots doing our laundry and drying our clothes already. That's true. That's true, but there have been, like laundry, folding robots, which I've seen at CES, and I'm not sure if you've ever actually been able to buy them, but they're giant contraptions, though that you're going to need a lot of space, whereas this, you know, having something that could walk around your house and fold your clothes and hang them up, put them away, that's the hard part for me, you know, mind blowing, but ultimately, or within our lifetimes, I still think you know, individual tasks like robot vacuums make a lot of sense. Robot lawnmowers, something I've been testing recently too been testing recently too.

But there's the companion element, too, that we've talked about in the past, about having a robot in your home that's actually part of your family in a way, or part of the home, and that's where we're seeing, with digital assistants and improvements on that front, that Amazon, google and Apple have all talked about, how they're making their digital assistants more conversational, better able to understand general language, and you can kind of see a conversion between that sort of side of artificial intelligence and then actually putting that kind of intelligence inside a human-eyed robot in your home and having that sort of what we've seen in science fiction in our homes. I don't, I'm still skeptical. I'm very skeptical that we're going to get to that anytime soon, and also what it would really be like to have something like that. I prefer at the moment the single, single use robots is more my speed because, yeah, it just seems a little creepy still, yeah.

0:26:28 - Mikah Sargent
I'm with you on that, Right, it's interesting, but I just worry about it. I worry, I'm like, okay, because in order to do those things, whether you're using hydraulics or using some sort of motorized situation, it's like these things are pretty powerful and if it gets it wrong especially because we've seen hallucination with the large language models yeah, that's a little intimidating. That's a little that's going to have to be done and a lot of proving that is going to need to take place, I feel, before people are going to be willing to invite multipurpose, you know, family-oriented robots into their home. That's my prediction anyway. I think it's going to take a lot of work to do that.

0:27:27 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
But this article definitely sort of sheds light on the fact that we are perhaps a lot closer than we thought to this type of technology and we've seen that these advancements are happening very quickly and NVIDIA in particular, I think, has already developed a lot in this space and a lot of sort of proof of concept bots that you can. You know it's not as science fiction as it was 10 years ago and that's large. In large part, you know, generative AI and large language models are really propelling all of this forward, which is, you know, really exciting and also quite terrifying.

0:28:02 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, absolutely. And again, I really encourage everyone to go check this piece out. There's a lot more to it and you know I didn't want to cover everything because I do want people to go and view this and see the really well-designed piece that the Financial Times has put together. Um, I I wonder how long it's going to be before we go from things like, you know, the, the Furby and the little. Well, I can't.

Was it Sony that made the dog? I can't remember now, but you know what I'm talking about that little dog. Yes To something that is actually. What was its name? I can't remember, but, yeah, I'd love to see somebody take a real crack at it. And even if it means that AIBO, a-i-b-o, and even if it was just a few people that ended up with something like this, I think it'd be cool, because I don't know how. I guess the last thing I'll ask you remember Amazon's little drone? Yes, the Astro. Yeah, robot, yeah, the Astro. Where do you feel like that fits into this scope, was it? I mean because it's a robot that would drive around your home and look at things, but it was also more of like a. It was a little bit more toward the robot vacuum side than the true. I can do things for you.

0:29:36 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
I think it would have been better if it had been a robot vacuum. Honestly, what it really lacked was arms, and you know it needed an arm and we are not far off from robot vacuums having arms. In fact, there's in this piece. There is, it needed an arm and we are not far off from robot vacuums having arms. In fact, in this piece they show a little robot rolling around a living room picking up items like tidying up for you. You know that's the kind of single-use robot not single-use but single-purpose robot that I would love. You know it can vacuum and pick up clutter off the floor.

Astro was more on the companion side. Amazon pushed it more for security, because it could tie into your security system. But really it was meant to be kind of a cute Alexa on wheels that you talk to and interacted with and it was fun from that perspective. But, yeah, it didn't really have a very sort of a killer use case Like why do I need this in my home, a robot that can tidy up my house? Yes, that is a use case that many Americans and people are going to get on board with. Yes, but also, as you point out, the danger, like if I have a robot that I can say you know, go feed the cat, and it can go open a cat can and feed the cat Great. But what if I said, go feed the cat and the dog, and it thought I said go feed the cat to the dog. Oh no, speaking as they walk around behind me, you know, and I have an automatic pet feeder that works great.

Again, a single purpose robot. It feeds my animals and I don't have to worry about it. So, yeah, as you said, the potential for getting it wrong is so big and we've seen this already with LLMs and generative AI that the downsides, we really have to figure out the guardrails and, as this point, this piece, goes into that too, saying the guardrails need to be there. We need to create something that's not going to be smarter than us and that realizes that we're you know, that we are the superior being here, and every article I read about this type of development that's, you know, sort of front and center. So I think I feel safer with those single purpose robots that don't have the potential to get things wrong, even if there's no malicious intent, the ability, as you say, as something that has this much power in your house, we've got a ways to go until I'd feel comfortable with something like that Absolutely.

0:32:05 - Mikah Sargent
Well, jennifer Pattison, to me I want to thank you for taking the time to join us today on Tech News Weekly. Always a pleasure to get to chat with you. If people want to follow along with what you do online, where are the places they should go to do that?

0:32:18 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
So the best place to start is thevergecom, and my author profile there has links to all of the socials that I'm on, which I don't think we have time to list because there are so many social networks today, but I have been toying with Blue Sky along with everyone else, so I'm on there at JP2E, and then I'm also on the threads at Smart Home Mama, and then I'm here once a month on the third Thursday, so come and see me.

0:32:45 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome. Thank you so much for your time and we'll see you again soon.

0:32:48 - Jennifer Pattison Tuohy
Thanks, bye.

0:32:50 - Mikah Sargent
Bye-bye. All right, we're going to take another quick break before we come back with our first of two interviews. The first one will be with Zach Bowden of Windows Central, who joins us to talk about some of the stuff that Microsoft announced at its recent event, but I want to tell you about 1Password, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. By now, we know the answer to the question do your end users always work on company-owned devices and IT-approved apps? No, I didn't think so. So how in the world do you actually keep your company's data safe when it's sitting on all of those unmanaged apps and devices? Well, 1password said let's figure this out. We're going to have an answer to that question. It's called extended access management, 1password.

Extended access management helps you secure every sign-in for every app on every device, because it solves the problems that traditional IAM and MDM can't touch. They are aimed at making sure that those the non-standard stuff, it's not the company-owned devices you have to worry about, the IT-approved apps that you have to worry about, the managed employee identities that you have to worry about. It's those shadow IT apps, the unmanaged devices, the non-employee identities. You know, like contractors, most security tools are going to work for that bright and happy world of the company-owned devices, but a lot of the security problems. Those are taking place in the unmanaged devices, in the shadow IT apps, in the non-employee identities. Well, extended access management focuses directly on that problem. It's the first security solution that brings all of those unmanaged devices, apps and identities under your control, ensuring that every user credential is strong and protected, every device is known and healthy and every app is visible. It's security for the way we actually work today and it's now generally available to companies with Okta and Microsoft Entra and in beta for Google Workspace customers.

So check it out at 1password.com/twit. That's 1-P-A-S-S-W-O-R-D.com/twit, and we thank 1Password for sponsoring this week's episode of Tech News Weekly. Alrighty, we are back from the break. Joining us from Windows Central, Zac Bowden, who joins us to talk about Microsoft's latest announcement. Welcome back to the show, Zac.

0:35:13 - Zac Bowden
Thanks for having me Very excited to be here.

0:35:15 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, pleasure to have you join us. So I was actually hoping before we kind of get into it I was personally, because I don't follow Microsoft super closely I was a little caught off guard when I saw all of these announcements hitting the news. What happened? Was there something going on that all of this stuff was announced?

0:35:34 - Zac Bowden
Yeah, so Microsoft was hosting its annual Ignite conference this week. It's an IT professional sort of conference where they announce all of their Microsoft 365 and enterprise-based announcements for the year. It's a big event. I think there's something like 10,000 people at the actual conference in Chicago, plus many more thousands online. So, yeah, it's a big deal.

0:35:55 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely so. Let's talk about one of the things that we saw announced the Windows 365 Link. This was a PC that I'm curious. What sets this apart, given that it's the first what they call boot-to-cloud desktop device? And then, more importantly, why is it focused on enterprise users?

0:36:20 - Zac Bowden
Yeah, so Microsoft essentially announced a mini PC this week. It's a desktop computer. It's smaller than the just announced M4 Mac mini, but what sets this apart from a sort of normal mini PC, I guess, is that it doesn't do anything locally. It's essentially a thin client, which means all of its functionality is in the cloud and it connects to Microsoft's Windows 365 service to do that, and so enterprise customers who use Windows 365 can essentially set up one of these remotely, send it straight to an employee, have their employee log into their Cloud PC and be right back where they left off on other devices.

And so Microsoft describes it as adminless, which I think is one of the reasons why enterprises are going to be so interested in this device. It means that they can configure it remotely via Microsoft Intune. The employee sets up the device when it arrives at their home or in their office, and within three minutes Microsoft says under three minutes you type in your internet connection details and then your work account and you're basically there at your computer. You don't need to worry about configuring the device locally or installing apps, it just does it automatically. And the device is actually quite cheap as well. It's 350 bucks, which compared to, say, you know, a dedicated laptop or desktop which I would guess maybe comes in at 500 bucks. For most enterprises that's quite a bit cheaper, and if you're giving this out to hundreds or thousands of employees, that's a big saving there.

0:37:40 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. Now let's talk about it being a thin client, having all of its functionality, or much of its functionality, in the cloud. How does that minimal local functionality impact usability and are there trade-offs when you've got a reliance on cloud-based computing?

0:38:03 - Zac Bowden
Yeah, so Microsoft says the device basically has no local functionality. The only real local things you'll see is a setup screen for connecting to the internet and signing into your work account and maybe a couple of settings screens for managing peripherals, for example. Everything else is done via the cloud PC, so it's basically just there. The version of Windows that it ships with is very lightweight and it's basically just there to handle the streaming video feed to your cloud PC as well as handing off your local peripherals to that cloud PC as well.

And there are pros and cons to that, the pros being it's much more secure, for example, if the device was ever stolen or if an employee lost it transferring it between locations, there is no data on the device, so any confidential information that that's part of your company, that's not there. Anyone who gains access to the device, who isn't supposed to, can't see anything on there. But there's also cons as well, such as if you don't have an internet connection, you can't do any work. If you're working in an office and the office internet goes down, you're all kind of done for the day until the internet comes back. And so there are pros and cons and it will depend on where you live, how stable your internet connection is, whether or not this is a viable option for you.

0:39:12 - Mikah Sargent
Now let's talk about the design, the hardware for this device. What are we looking at in terms of ports and all that jazz? I mean, you probably want to be able to have some input. Does it have Bluetooth? Yeah, what are we working with here?

0:39:29 - Zac Bowden
Yeah. So I mean, it's essentially like a normal mini desktop PC. It has a whole bunch of ports. I think it has three USB-A ports, one USB-C port, a display port, hdmi, ethernet, as well as a power button on the front, which I think is commendable considering the Mac mini does not have that.

But yeah, it will basically look and function like a normal PC. The only difference is that Windows isn't running locally on the device. You can plug in a USB drive, you can plug in a webcam, you can plug in two 4K displays and the cloud PC will see and identify that as if Windows was running locally on the device. The device is also fanless, which makes it so it can be super thin, and the reason it's fanless is because it's really not doing much. It quite literally is only handling that feed between the local device and the cloud PC, and so it's super small. It's super quiet because there's no fans in it and also because there's no moving parts. There's less likely, you know, things won't break as often in there.

So an enterprise can basically set it and forget it. They can give it to an employee and ideally they won't have to worry about that device ever again, unless something like the RAM fails or whatever. But yeah, it's. It's a very sort of cute, small little box that will fit on basically any desk Super lightweight, super tiny. You won't it won't? You know, it's not a pain to set up.

0:40:42 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. And then let's talk about kind of the implications that this link has for the future of desktop computing, because I think I can remember early episodes of Windows Weekly and regularly from that point on, that's a show on the Twit Network for people who are listening, who are wondering about that, talking about the thin client, the thin client, the cloud PC. Do you think that this is Microsoft's vision for all situations or is it still very much an enterprise play?

0:41:19 - Zac Bowden
It's currently very much an enterprise play Windows 365,. This box only works with Windows 365. And currently that service is enterprise only. There is no consumer version of Windows 365 that a normal end user can subscribe to, at least not yet. I think it's an open secret that Microsoft would like to introduce a Windows 365 subscription for consumers at some point in the future, but I don't think they view that as being a replacement for how most people use Windows today, which is to say, locally on a box in front of their computer screen or laptop. That's probably going to be the way most people use Windows and choose to use Windows.

However, I think everyone knows somebody like this in their life.

These days, not everybody needs a computer anymore.

A lot of people just do everything on their phones and only sometimes need a computer to print something or check something in an app that isn't available on their phone.

And so you know, for that kind of person, does it make more sense to buy a 500 or $600 laptop that they're only going to use, you know, three times a year, four times a year?

Or does it make more sense to periodically subscribe to a cloud PC for 30, 40 bucks and say, well, I need windows this month to do a couple of things subscribe to it via the windows 365 service, access it via the Windows app on my phone or on my tablet, whatever it may be, do what you need to do in Windows and then say, all right, I'm done, unsubscribe and you've only spent 40 bucks, versus 500 bucks on a laptop that will age, versus a cloud PC, which doesn't age. They're always up to date, they're always you subscribe to the latest specs, and so you always have enough RAM and enough storage, and so you know. For people like that, I think cloud PCs make sense, and also for people who are constantly moving around and don't necessarily want to carry a device with them all the time. If you have an endpoint at one location and an endpoint at another location, you can just log into it via a cloud PC and you can get back to your your your local, not your local your cloud desktop wherever you are.

0:43:04 - Mikah Sargent
Absolutely. Now I want to change gears just a little bit, because another thing that was announced, or sort of you know, shown off, was Windows having a better integration with MetaQuest headsets. Can you tell us about how the new Windows 11 integration improves the functionality of these virtual workspaces? I know that they really touted the virtual monitors.

0:43:30 - Zac Bowden
Yeah, so the integration that was announced for MetaQuest is essentially just making it so the pairing process is a lot more seamless between your Windows 11 PC and your headset, similar to the Apple Vision Pro.

When on Apple Vision Pro you look at a Mac, there's a prompt that lets you sort of connect to that device specifically.

They're essentially bringing something similar to that to the MetaQuest, and so you can look at Windows 11 laptop and there'll be a prompt that pops up that says connect this to your MetaQuest. And then doing that will just basically take that desktop from the laptop screen and place it in the virtual environment in your headsets, and from there you can, of course, resize that, make it bigger, smaller, change the resolution. You can add multiple virtual monitors you can have two or three surrounding you and you can have that either in your real space via the pass-through cameras within the MetaQuest or you can have it in a virtual space within the headset itself. And that also works with Windows 365. So this works with consumers because it works with your own PC at home if you have one. But if you don't have one, if you're using Windows 365, you can punch in your Windows 365 credentials and you can connect your cloud PC directly within the headset as well, and so it just makes using your Windows PC within your MetaQuest headset a lot more seamless and integrated.

0:44:41 - Mikah Sargent
Understood and do you think this says anything about Microsoft's maybe pivot away from its own VR hardware into just saying you know what, we'll just integrate in other places, in the same way that we've seen the company do that in the mobile device space, phone space, yeah.

0:45:02 - Zac Bowden
Microsoft has seen a lot of success with partnering versus building its own hardware.

You know they did have the HoloLens 2, and that was being produced for a number of years I think five years now. They announced earlier this year that they're ending production on the HoloLens 2, partly because the device is sort of getting old now. But the problem there is that there doesn't appear to be a successor lined up. There isn't a HoloLens 3 around the corner, or maybe ever. They were working on one, but it appears that those plans sort of fell through, and so now Windows and Microsoft's mixed reality efforts are sort of up in the air there, and so I think what we're seeing is Microsoft partner with Meta because, yeah, it's easier for them. They can just bundle their services on top of Meta's OS, and I think for them that's. There's a lot less R and D there. They don't have to spend as much money figuring out how to build the hardware, they just provide the service and they make money that way, and I think they're happy to do that. Hopefully we see a HoloLens 3 in the future, but I think it's unlikely.

0:45:53 - Mikah Sargent
Fingers crossed. Zach, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us to talk us through everything that Microsoft, or much of what Microsoft, had announced. If people want to keep up to date with what you've got going on, where should they go to do that?

0:46:07 - Zac Bowden
You can find all my work at windowscentralcom and you can also follow me on x and bluesky at Zach Bowden or at Zachonl on Blue Sky Awesome.

0:46:17 - Mikah Sargent
Thanks so much for your time and we'll see you again soon.

0:46:19 - Zac Bowden
Thank you.

0:46:21 - Mikah Sargent
Already. We're going to take another quick break before we come back with Leah Nylen of Bloomberg, who will be joining us to talk about the latest in the Google versus the DOJ saga, but I do want to take a moment to tell you about Flashpoint, who are bringing you this episode of Tech News Weekly. For security leaders, 2024 has been a year like no other. Cyber threats and physical security concerns have continued to increase, and now geopolitical instability is adding a new layer of risk and uncertainty. So let's talk numbers. Last year, there was a staggering 84% rise in ransomware attacks and a 34% jump in data breaches. The result Trillions of dollars in financial losses and threats to safety worldwide.

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And we are back from the break. As I promised, Leah Nylen of Bloomberg has joined us once again to give us an update on the Google antitrust saga. Welcome back to the show.

0:48:48 - Leah Nylen
Thank you for having me.

0:48:49 - Mikah Sargent
Yeah, a pleasure. So when you first joined us, you outlined the foundational claims of the antitrust case against Google. Can you explain how the DOJ's latest proposals, including the potential sale of Chrome, escalate those stakes?

0:49:05 - Leah Nylen
Yes.

So the judge found this summer that Google had an illegal monopoly in two areas online search and online search advertising and yesterday the Justice Department put in a proposal sort of outlining how they think they want to solve that problem, and the big headline there is that they think Google should be forced to sell Chrome, which is the most widely used browser in the world.

I've been answering a lot the question what is the difference between a browser and a search engine? Your people probably know, but for those who don't, a browser is the way that you access the web, and it's just since about the early aughts. The way that we have done that is that you can go up to the top of the browser bar and type in a query and it would always automatically go to Google. That's a choice that Google made and was paying billions of dollars to others to ensure that would happen, and the Justice Department says that that really helped further their monopoly. So they should be sort of required to divest this piece of software to another company who could then maybe change it so that it wouldn't default to Google and expect more competition in search and online.

0:50:11 - Mikah Sargent
Understood Now. Chrome's integration with Google's ecosystem has been a key focus of the DOJ, as we've kind of talked about here. But why is the browser sale considered critical to actually fostering competition and in the sale of that? How does that kind of have an impact on the broader browser marketplace?

0:50:36 - Leah Nylen
Yeah, so I was saying you know, a lot of people don't even really recognize that there's much difference between the browser and the search engine anymore. You know, back in the earlier days of the internet we did sort of think of these as different things. You know, you would literally go into the top and type wwwyahoocom and then you would search if you wanted to search something. But now it's become more automatic. People don't even really think about the fact that they are searching Google when they type Aquarian, and so you know, some of the other things in this remedy are requesting that Google give people or make it easier for people to know that they can change to a different search engine.

By selling Chrome to another company, that company would have the opportunity to possibly change the search engine. And Chrome is useful for Google, not just because it diverts so much traffic to its search engine, but also because it has so many people log in with their Google accounts. And when you do that, Google has a lot more information about where you're going on the web, how much time you're spending reading email or watching YouTube videos, and it uses all of that information to sell advertising, which is its main business, and the Justice Department hopes that sort of. By breaking that link, by taking away this huge access point, Google might have to compete more with others.

0:51:48 - Mikah Sargent
Interesting. Now you talked about the logging in and having all of that information. Google, for its part, says okay, but here's the thing If you do that, it's going to harm these consumers and these developers who integrate with Chrome. How do the antitrust officials kind of counter that claim? And maybe you could start by elaborating a little bit on what Google is saying to counteract, but particularly regarding user experience and innovation, which is sort of the sounding point of breaking up a monopoly in the first place.

0:52:25 - Leah Nylen
Yeah, so Google says that if it's forced to sell off Chrome, it's not going to be good for users, because right now, when you use Chrome, especially if you log in, you can sort of seamlessly go between a lot of different things. You can go to your email really quickly, you can go to YouTube, you can go to search and then anywhere else on the web. And they say that this is good. It makes it really easy for consumers to do what they want online. And you know, obviously if they sold off their browser, it might be more difficult for you to transition between these, these sorts of things.

Well, the Justice Department says one, that's not necessarily true. Like you know, there are people who use, for example, safari, Microsoft Edge, mozilla all the time, and they can still also use Google services. And two you know this is Google sort of imagining the world as it is and that that is the way that it will always remain. You know, if somebody did, you know, take over this browser as, again, the most used one in the world, they could maybe reimagine the internet a different way. The browser is really the gateway to the internet and we have been confusing, like the browser as the gateway with Google as the gateway, and so maybe if we, you know, gave somebody else a chance to come up with some new technologies, to do this in a slightly different way, we might have like they might come up with a better way of doing it.

0:53:44 - Mikah Sargent
Understood. Now we're going to take one super quick break before we come back with more questions, this time kind of looking at the potential sale of Chrome looking at the potential sale of Chrome.

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So we've been talking about how the DOJ is suggesting that selling Chrome might be one way to handle what's going on with Google. But we've got to look at something which is kind of glaring the potential value of Chrome estimated at 15 to 20 billion dollars. Who out there might be interested in purchasing it and then like it? It has to, it could. There are probably some businesses who couldn't purchase it because then it would just result in a monopoly on their part. So like what are the barriers that are involved? Who can buy this thing?

0:55:39 - Leah Nylen
Yeah, there's.

I mean that is a pretty good point, because 15 to $20 billion is a lot of money, and the two biggest companies in the United States who have lots of money would be Microsoft and Apple, and the Justice Department is not going to let either of them buy it because both of them already have browsers, and so that would be concentrating the browser market.

So some interesting ideas I've heard from people is maybe some of the AI startups, like OpenAI or Perplexity, who have been experimenting with sort of AI based search, might be interested in buying Chrome and sort of integrating it with their products. Another idea is maybe one of the other search engines that's still pretty nascent right now, like maybe DuckDuckGo or Ecosia, might want to invest in a browser. Although it might be, as both of those are pretty small companies, it might be a big call. Browser although it might be, as both of those are pretty small companies, it might be a big call. The other option is maybe some kind of a third-party investment firm who would like to invest in sort of the future of search or AI. I do like to point out to people that $20 billion is actually only half of what Elon Musk bought Twitter for. So you know we have some plenty deep-pocketed individuals out there. If they wanted to make an investment in the future of, you know, the Internet and technology, they certainly could.

0:56:52 - Mikah Sargent
That is a really good point. Yeah, that's, that's very true. Yeah, wow, ok, see, this is why I love talking to you, because you've got great answers for all these questions. Where I'm going, I don't even know what this could possibly be, is where I'm going, I don't even know what this could possibly be. So, beyond the potential sale of Chrome, the DOJ has proposed remedies like data licensing requirements and unbundling Android from other Google services. How do these measures aim to address the monopoly concerns that are raised in the case?

0:57:19 - Leah Nylen
Yeah, so the unbundling of Android is a really actually important one. The way that Google sells Android right now is it gives Android the operating system away for free. But if you want Google Play, which is the place where you know everyone uses to download apps, you have to sign an agreement with them that agrees that you will accept all of Google services. It's an all or nothing package, essentially. So to get the Play Store, you have to agree to install Chrome, to install Google Search, to install YouTube, and you know there's usually a list of about 11 Google apps that they require you to install. It changes, you know, time to time, but the Justice Department says you know, let's stop bundling it that way. You know, let people pick and choose which of the Google apps they want. They're going to want the Play Store and they might want some of these other ones, but don't force it on them. That will give the opportunity for other players in search even other players in video or some of the other services that Google has, like pictures or music or things like that to have a. You know, try and get phone makers to pre-install them on a phone.

The data piece is also pretty important. It's like a little bit nerdy, but you know, the data is sort of Google's secret sauce. The judge in the case found that because so many more people use Google than other search engines, it gets 16 times as much data as the next closest search engine, and that allows Google to really improve its search engine much more than anybody else. So by requiring Google to turn over some of this information to others, they're going to be able to rapidly improve themselves because they will suddenly have access to the same level of information that Google does, and some of the other search engines were thrilled by this piece more than anything else.

0:59:12 - Mikah Sargent
That makes me wonder. It's another question that I had at first. But where do you think? What do you think of the remedies that the DOJ is suggesting? If it was a horse race, which of these horses would you be betting on most likely as kind of the steps forward? Is it that that one sounded the least painful? I guess in my mind, to Google would be licensing some data out versus getting rid of Chrome, unbundling Android, yeah. Is there one that seems more likely than others? Or is it going to take more than just one whenever it comes to what the DOJ suggests as a remedy?

0:59:59 - Leah Nylen
I think they're hoping for a package of these. A lot of people who have watched the case really think the judge, judge Ahmed Mehta, is not going to go for the divestiture. It is a pretty radical remedy. The US hasn't required a company to spin off anything as a result of monopolization since 1984. So like since before I was born, so it is a pretty radical thing. That doesn't happen that often. He's a pretty sort of conservative judge, so he might not go for it, but the data piece is very interesting.

This is something that's already being required over in Europe under the Digital Markets Act, so Google can't really argue that it doesn't know how to do it. It's already doing it over there and it is sort of like a good way. That would help other search engines, and one thing that the Justice Department made a good point about is it would also help with the development of AI. A problem that a lot of startups are having is to get enough data. To build an LLM, you need to scrape the web a lot. You need a lot of content. Well, now they wouldn't need to do that. They could just go to Google and license all of that information. So it would help give us a leg up to all of these potential startups who want to get into the business of creating these types of models.

1:01:15 - Mikah Sargent
Now let's talk about the historic precedents that could be set here. What are, firstly, the next steps in the process? It sounds like it's one of these volley things of and I'm appealing, and then how might Google's appeal influence the timeline and the outcomes?

1:01:34 - Leah Nylen
Yeah, so the very next step is that Google gets to respond next month, so it's going to come out with its own proposal for what should happen in this case Spoiler alert.

Their proposal is going to be a lot less restrictive than the Justice Department's, and then in March, the Justice Department gets to do another filing. This is an opportunity to give the Trump administration an opportunity to weigh in, because the judge does recognize that we're having a potential shift in administrations here, and then he's going to hold a two-week hearing in April about all of this. We don't quite know how that's going to work. He's probably going to hear from some people at Google, maybe some people at competitors, about how these changes would impact the business, and he says he will issue his decision by sometime next summer, definitely before August 2025, at which point in time Google has said it will appeal 2025, at which point in time Google has said it will appeal, and so that process generally takes anywhere from a year to 18 months, which means that all of these things if there is a Chrome breakup, if there is this new licensing regime it's probably not going to go into effect until late 2026, maybe early 2027.

1:02:43 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, so it's a while away. All right, so if the sale of Chrome or other remedies proceed, how could this impact Google's dominance in search? And then, I think more interestingly personally, do you foresee other tech giants facing similar regulatory actions?

1:03:04 - Leah Nylen
facing similar regulatory actions? Yeah, this is a question I've been getting a lot. I do think that the Justice Department has targeted a good number of the bases of Google's dominance. You know it has all this data, it has these great access points like Chrome and Android, and the Justice Department is trying to do something about that. So I think you know this could definitely impact Google's like share in the search engine market and even like the amount of money that it makes for advertising, because if it doesn't have as much data from people about where they're going online and how to target ads, the ad pricing might fall. And you know there may be more other places that people want to advertise online. There may be more other places that people want to advertise online.

In terms of the other tech giants, you know we're just getting started on some of those cases. You know all of them are facing major antitrust cases. The next one that is going to trial is the Facebook case, which is supposed to be sometime next year, but all of them are now going to have this like big precedent of both how the judge thought about you know Google's monopolistic behavior and how he thought it was important to remedy it. So that could definitely have an impact on what judges are going to do down the line with, you know, amazon or Apple, or even Ticketmaster.

1:04:21 - Mikah Sargent
Wow, I want to thank you so much for taking the time to join us talking to us through this. I know you've been answering these questions for a lot of people and we appreciate you taking the time to do that here. If people want to follow along to keep up to date with what's going on, where are the places they should go to do that?

1:04:38 - Leah Nylen
Yeah, I'm on Blue Sky and you can also find me on LinkedIn.

1:04:42 - Mikah Sargent
Awesome, and what's your username on Blue Sky? It's my name, Leanne Island, oh excellent, excellent, all right, thank you so much for your time.

1:04:49 - Leah Nylen
Thank you.

1:04:51 - Mikah Sargent
And with that everyone, we have reached the end of this episode of Tech News Weekly. Our show publishes every Thursday at twit.tv/tnw. That is where you go to subscribe to the show in audio and video formats. I do want to remind you that next Thursday is Thanksgiving and so there will not be a show on that day, but we'll be back next month with the show. And if you would like to get all of our shows ad free, well, you can do it for free by joining Club TWiT.

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